When you interview for a job, here is a hint: make sure you know what the job is. Joe Biden failed that test last Thursday. He couldn’t even get right what a vice president does, but the media didn’t notice.

The media is all over itself about how smart and experienced Biden is. Political analyst Charlie Cook is quoted in the Washington Post on Saturday as saying “Biden is clearly so much more knowledgeable, by a factor of about a million.” Saturday Night Live does a skit about Biden being smart, if slimy. Meanwhile, Governor Sarah Palin is treated as being nothing more than a simpleton.

Yet, take Biden’s statement from the debate on the role of the vice president:

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive, and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.

One should be careful when throwing around terms such as “most dangerous” and “bizarre.” But Biden is confusing which part of the Constitution covers the Executive Branch (it is Article II, not Article I). More importantly, the notion that the vice president can preside over the Senate only when there is a tie vote is simply wrong. Nor is it true that the only legislative involvement the vice president has is to break tie votes. The vice president is the president of the Senate, where he interprets the rules and can only be overridden by a vote of 60 senators.

Early vice presidents spent a lot of time in the Senate. Thomas Jefferson even spent his time writing “A Manual of Parliamentary Practice: for the Use of the Senate of the United States.” Modern vice presidents may show up only when they think tie votes will occur, but that is their choice.

This isn’t rocket science. The Constitution on this point is very straightforward: “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.”

Instead, it was Palin who got it right. Besides correctly stating that the vice president holds positions in both the executive and legislative branches, she also noted that:

Of course, we know what a vice president does. And that's not only to preside over the Senate and [I] will take that position very seriously also. I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chooses to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are.

But just as the vice president’s job includes more than simply being ready to assume the presidency if the president dies, the Constitution merely states what the vice president’s minimum responsibilities are.

Compare the uproar over Palin’s answer to Charlie Gibson about the “Bush Doctrine,” a doctrine that Gibson clearly didn’t understand and for which there apparently exist at least four different versions. Where is the outrage over Biden not understanding what vice presidents do? For Biden, his inability to correctly say what vice presidents do was surely his “gotcha” moment.

Yet, this mistake during the debate was hardly unique. Biden got a lot of things wrong in the debate that are going unnoticed by the fact-check media. Take just a few:

-- Will McCain's health care proposals raise taxes? Biden says that McCain’s proposal will cost people money. The Tax Foundation finds that could easily be "roughly deficit-neutral over ten years."

-- Under an Obama Administration the middle class will "pay no more than they did under Ronald Reagan"? No, the tax rates will be similar to the higher rates under Clinton.

-- Did "we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spent on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan building that country"? No, one year’s worth of spending in Iraq equaled five in Afghanistan.

-- France and the U.S. "kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon"? No, and it wouldn't have made much more sense if he had said "Syria" instead.

-- Is it really “simply not true” that Obama said that he would meet with the leader of countries such as Iran without preconditions? No, Obama said “I would.”

-- Do “Iraqis have an $80 billion surplus”? No. If oil prices had remained high, it might have reached $50 billion by the end of this year.

-- Finally, an amusing point as evidence that Biden is just one of the people he pointed to, inviting anyone to have a beer with him at "Katie's Restaurant" in Wilmington, Del. Unfortunately, people will have a hard time taking him up on his offer, since the restaurant hasn't had that name for probably 15 years.

Unfortunately, voters who are trying to get an accurate count on whether the candidates are telling the truth can’t rely on the media. FactCheck.org mentions only one of these points, the size of the Iraqi surplus. The Washington Post mentioned Biden’s misstatement on Hamas and Katie’s restaurant. AOL’s coverage of the errors in the vice presidential debate was by far the worst, though that might not be too surprising given that Tommy Christopher, who wrote their news analysis, also blogs on the Obama Web site. None of these checkers mentioned Biden's statements about the role of the vice president.

Compare this to the attacks on Sarah Palin:

-- FactCheck.org criticizes Palin for claiming that McCain’s health care tax credits will be "budget neutral" – they argue that the tax credit will be larger than the new taxes that the program will impose. Fine, but if the people at FactCheck.org believe that is true and that the Tax Foundation is wrong, Biden’s claim about increased taxes is even more inaccurate. But FactCheck.org doesn't even mention Biden’s statement from the debate.

-- From AOL's news analysis piece. “Palin: Said that it is untrue that the U.S. is killing civilians in Afghanistan. According to an analysis by the AP, however, the U.S. is killing more civilians than insurgents are.”

What Palin actually said was: “Now, Barack Obama had said that all we're doing in Afghanistan is air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” Whether one believes the AP estimate or not, the question is whether she was accurately characterizing Obama’s statement of the job that our forces were doing. And Obama said, “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians” (emphasis added).

-- FactCheck.org’s first critique claims that Palin was wrong to claim that troop levels in Iraq are down to their pre-surge levels. They are correct that after the recently announced drawdown, 6,000 more troops will be in Iraq than immediately before the surge. But why not mention that 84 percent of the 38,000 troops in the surge are home or are in the process of coming home?

The media seems to have been covering for Biden for some time. While news stories still talk about Dan Quayle’s spelling mistake 18 years later, there has been almost no news coverage of Biden’s numerous wacky statements. What if Quayle had said something similar to Biden’s recent statement that, "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'" A neat trick given that Herbert Hoover was president in 1929 and television was not yet invented.

It might not fit the simple template for a 36-year veteran of the Senate to not understand what vice presidents do (after all, eight vice presidents have served with him), but Biden knew less about this than the political outsider, Sarah Palin. Given that they are running to be vice president, why didn’t that story dominate the news coverage after the debate?

Why is it when people don't like what they hear in the media they feel it is the media that is biased?

How about that ever so liberal coverage of Fox news?

Oddly enough I find it humorous for John Lott to complain of bias in the media since he is an accomplished conservative writer. He has a study that studied media bias but I have yet to find anything substantial to his report. The topic he is famous for is gun control.

The focus by the media regarding Joe Biden or Sarah Palin and the responsiblities of the VP are humorous. I'm more concerned with stands that the presidential candidates are taking concerning Indian country. There are none. We aren't mentioned.
We all know about John McCain's refusal to take campaign donations from us. Does anyone know or care about the fact that John McCain submitted legislation seeking to give states more control over Indian gaming? The states already have too much control as it is. The control that they exert dimishes our soverignty and our right to control our economics. The reasons are simple, we are getting too successful, we are taking dollars away from the whites that the Feds and states want to have. Apparently we need to be reined in.
The bribes, under the terms of the compacts, and yes they are bribes, what else could they be? Taxes? But the states aren't allowed to tax us. But they demand for us to kick in to the states coffers for us to operate anything above a bingo hall and that my friends, is a bribe. A legal bribe I suppose, but a bribe none the less.
Also alarming me is the team of lobbyists and advisers that McCain has assembled to run his operation, there are Abramoff people in there, Rove disciples are in there, all of the Swift Boat dirty tricks operatives are in there.
John McCain has turned his back on his old "mavericky" self, toed the Republican hard line, embraced those who smeared him and his war record and become a conservative darling.

Now the other side: A concern is the Congressional Black Caucus and their obvious special interests. They feel empowered now that one of their own is a candidate for office and have attempted to strong-arm the Cherokee Nation for their audacity in their attempts to clean out anyone that has no ancestry or blood from their tribal rolls by threatening their funding. They cite a treaty made in 1868 as proof of the Freedmen's right to be on the rolls. I have read the wording in that particular treaty and saw nothing to that effect. The amendment ot the Cherokee Constititution made their enrollment possible and that Constitution was changed by a majority tribal vote in referendum. I am afraid that having a Black president would be just as bad for Indians as having more than 200 years of White presidents, even more so because being Black seems to be the special interest that I allueded to earlier. Where do you think the 40 acres and the mules were coming from?
Example: At one of Obama's speeches, some young Blacks were carrying a sign and shouting about Black issues. The Longest Walk was due or had just arrived in DC but the news coverage was all about the protest. Not a word was uttered on any of the news outlets regarding the Walk from San Francisco to Washington, DC. You want an example of media disparity? How about that?
The Nations have poured their support toward Barack Obama over McCain and I personally have reservations but we as the First People can't endure anymore Republican leadership.

I've been trying to fact check some of these items on my own, beyond what factcheck.org even does. It's hard to know who is being honest since there is so much slant, smear, editing, etc., thrown around.

Obama wants us to think about what others have done "wrong" the last 8 years. Well, I've been looking at what he's done, especially over the past 2 years. This isn't mentioned in the media. Why are there so many issues that he hits on over and over again, but when there was a vote on them in the Senate HE DIDN'T EVEN VOTE? Not voted for or against, just WASN'T THERE?

I went to votesmart.org, a site where you can view the voting history of all members of Congress (pulled from the Congressional Record) and I find that on key votes relating to many issues Obama is listed as a "no vote."

So, where has he been all of these months? If you take the time to look through this all, you'll find that since he started actively campaigning for President his duties as Senator have taken a back seat. He has more No Votes listed for 2007 and 2008 than he does in his first couple of years in the Senate.

You won't see this in the media. It's obvious who they want us to vote for. I can safely say that for the first time in my life I fear for my country. I fear for a nation who is so bombarded by one-sided facts and slants that aren't allowed to see beyond the blinders that the media has put on them. Just humor me and really, really RESEARCH the facts for yourself before you vote this year.

I guess that is why Fox itself says it is opinion based journalism and the viewer should clearly know they are not getting entirely fact based information. That neutrality sure is tough to maintain when you work with the way you think news should sound as opposed to how it actually is. Ever see an infomercial set up to look like the national news? Same difference.

Not that anyone here will take this article as anything other than gospel about Obama, but here is a modern example of the situation and proof of the bias issue when reporting non fact based information as if it were meaningful. And before we get sidetracked, yes the other side does it as well which is why everyone has to know what they are being fed and how real it is vs. how real it feels. They don't broadcast this stuff thinking that you are actually going to go and think critically about how true it may be. They just want ratings so they can get advertising revenue. Appeal to emotion and your ratings rise. Who cares if it is true if it sounds good and it is what people want to hear?

Fox News runs controversial opinion program on Obama's connections

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/07/america/fox.php

Jim Rutenberg

During a weekend of Republican attacks on Senator Barack Obama's personal associations, Fox News Channel ran a program Sunday that made provocative assertions about similar connections, called "Obama & Friends: The History of Radicalism."

Sean Hannity, the conservative radio and television host, was the host of the hourlong program, which raised, among other things, unsubstantiated accusations that Obama's work as a community organizer in Chicago was "training for a radical overthrow of the government."

The statement came from Andy Martin, a conservative writer and frequent political candidate who is credited as being among the first - if not the first - to assert in a chain e-mail message that Obama was secretly a Muslim.

Obama is a Christian; his campaign says he "is not, was not and has never been" a Muslim.

Peppering his statements with phrases like "in my opinion" and "my view is," Martin said Obama's political career had been engineered by Bill Ayers, a founder and former member of the radical Weather Underground and now an education professor in Chicago.

Various reports, including ones in The New York Times, have found no evidence that Obama and Ayers were particularly close, although they have had various points of contact. Ayers was host of an event for Obama early in his political career, they served together on a charitable board, and both worked on an educational project financed by the billionaire philanthropist Walter Annenberg.

The program was the latest step in the evolution of opinion journalism on cable news. It comes as one of Fox News's rivals, MSNBC, becomes increasingly liberal, with hosts like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann advocating against Senator John McCain. But Hannity's program on Sunday was notable in presenting partisan accusations against Obama in a journalistic, documentary format in prime time.

Saying he believed that ties between Obama and Ayers were deeper, and reporting that Ayers had been an admirer of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who, in turn, is an acolyte of Fidel Castro, Martin said, "If you love the Cuban revolution and Castro, and if you love what's happening in Venezuela with Hugo Chávez, you'll love Barry Obama - Barack Obama, as he calls himself - in the White House."

For good measure, Martin, who made a failed bid to run on the Republican line in the 2004 race for a Senate seat from Illinois that Obama won, added, "We are basically going in the throes of a social revolution which attempts to essentially freeze out anybody who is not part of this radical ideology."

The special was shown on "Hannity's America," the Sunday night program in which Hannity does not have to share the screen with his weeknight liberal co-host on Fox News, Alan Colmes.

Hannity said that Obama did not respond to a request for comment. Still, the program presented no opposing viewpoint to the program's thesis: that, in Hannity's words, "Obama's list of friends reads like a history of radicalism."

Martin said he was careful not to present his theories about Obama as proven fact.

"That is my opinion - expert opinion - if you will," Martin said of his commentary on Hannity's program. "I don't pretend to be an exclusively fact-based reporter, though I try as hard as I can to get the facts."

Martin came under strong attack from liberals on Monday. Many noted that the Republican Party of Florida decided against backing his bid for the state Senate in 1996 after receiving documents, from his congressional race 10 years earlier in Connecticut, listing the purpose of one of his political committees as "to exterminate Jew power in America and to impeach the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City."

Martin had previously said the documents were forged, and again denied their authenticity on Monday. He also denied harboring anti-Semitic sentiment, saying, "It's peripheral; it draws you away from the issue."

Fox News is in the business of making money for Rupert Murdoch, who, incidentally, pays no corporate taxes at all. As long as their "Fair and Balanced" schtick remains controversial, he makes money. He simply does not agree with his broadcasters at Fox News. He is rather tongue in cheek about the "Fair and Balanced" statement.

Fox News is in the business of making money for Rupert Murdoch, who, incidentally, pays no corporate taxes at all. As long as their "Fair and Balanced" schtick remains controversial, he makes money. He simply does not agree with his broadcasters at Fox News. He is rather tongue in cheek about the "Fair and Balanced" statement.

I had to bump this thread again mostly due to the Fact of all the News of Rupert Murdoch and his problems with the phone hacking scandal...
I know damn well that he won't fall but the lower echelons will

So should they be able to get the "News" at all costs?? I mean they are no different from the paparazzi that hound people to get the shot that will make them money!
Interesting....
News guys and Paparazzi lumped together and no different from the other.

__________________A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. — Robert A. Heinlein